THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The
Duties of American Citizenship
January
26, 1883

Of course, in one sense, the first essential for a man's
being a good citizen is his possession of the home virtues
of which we think when we call a man by the emphatic adjective
of manly. No man can be a good citizen who is not a good
husband and a good father, who is not honest in his dealings
with other men and women, faithful to his friends and fearless
in the presence of his foes, who has not got a sound heart,
a sound mind, and a sound body; exactly as no amount of
attention to civil duties will save a nation if the domestic
life is undermined, or there is lack of the rude military
virtues which alone can assure a country's position in
the world. In a free republic the ideal citizen must be
one willing and able to take arms for the defense of the
flag, exactly as the ideal citizen must be the father of
many healthy children. A race must be strong and vigorous;
it must be a race of good fighters and good breeders, else
its wisdom will come to naught and its virtue be ineffective;
and no sweetness and delicacy, no love for and appreciation
of beauty in art or literature, no capacity for building
up material prosperity can possibly atone for the lack
of the great virile virtues.

But this is aside from my subject, for what I wish to
talk of is the attitude of the American citizen in civic
life. It ought to be axiomatic in this country that every
man must devote a reasonable share of his time to doing
his duty in the Political life of the community. No man
has a right to shirk his political duties under whatever
plea of pleasure or business; and while such shirking may
be pardoned in those of small cleans it is entirely unpardonable
in those among whom it is most common--in the people whose
circumstances give them freedom in the struggle for life.
In so far as the community grows to think rightly, it will
likewise grow to regard the young man of means who shirks
his duty to the State in time of peace as being only one
degree worse than the man who thus shirks it in time of
war. A great many of our men in business, or of our young
men who are bent on enjoying life (as they have a perfect
right to do if only they do not sacrifice other things
to enjoyment), rather plume themselves upon being good
citizens if they even vote; yet voting is the very least
of their duties, Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without
effort. You can no more have freedom without striving and
suffering for it than you can win success as a banker or
a lawyer without labor and effort, without self-denial
in youth and the display of a ready and alert intelligence
in middle age. The people who say that they have not time
to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit
to live in a free community. Their place is under a despotism;
or if they are content to do nothing but vote, you can
take despotism tempered by an occasional plebiscite, like
that of the second Napoleon. In one of Lowell's magnificent
stanzas about the Civil War he speaks of the fact which
his countrymen were then learning, that freedom is not
a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards: nor yet
does it tarry long in the hands of the sluggard and the
idler, in the hands of the man so much absorbed in the
pursuit of pleasure or in the pursuit of gain, or so much
wrapped up in his own easy home life as to be unable to
take his part in the rough struggle with his fellow men
for political supremacy. If freedom is worth having, if
the right of self-government is a valuable right, then
the one and the other must be retained exactly as our forefathers
acquired them, by labor, and especially by labor in organization,
that is in combination with our fellows who have the same
interests and the same principles. We should not accept
the excuse of the business man who attributed his failure
to the fact that his social duties were so pleasant and
engrossing that he had no time left for work in his office;
nor would we pay much heed to his further statement that
he did not like business anyhow because he thought the
morals of the business community by no means what they
should be, and saw that the great successes were most often
won by men of the Jay Gould stamp. It is just the same
way with politics. It makes one feel half angry and half
amused, and wholly contemptuous, to find men of high business
or social standing in the community saying that they really
have not got time to go to ward meetings, to organize political
clubs, and to take a personal share in all the important
details of practical politics; men who further urge against
their going the fact that they think the condition of political
morality low, and are afraid that they may be required
to do what is not right if they go into politics.

The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he
shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall
do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that
it shall be done in accord with the highest principles
of honor and justice. Of course, it is not possible to
define rigidly just the way in which the work shall be
made practical. Each man's individual temper and convictions
must be taken into account. To a certain extent his work
must be done in accordance with his individual beliefs
and theories of right and wrong. To a yet greater extent
it must be done in combination with others, he yielding
or modifying certain of his own theories and beliefs so
as to enable him to stand on a common ground with his fellows,
who have likewise yielded or modified certain of their
theories and beliefs. There is no need of dogmatizing about
independence on the one hand or party allegiance on the
other. There are occasions when it may be the highest duty
of any man to act outside of parties and against the one
with which he has himself been hitherto identified; and
there may be many more occasions when his highest duty
is to sacrifice some of his own cherished opinions for
the sake of the success of the party which he on the whole
believes to be right. I do not think that the average citizen,
at least in one of our great cities, can very well manage
to support his own party all the time on every issue, local
and otherwise; at any rate if he can do so he has been
more fortunately placed than I have been. On the other
hand, I am fully convinced that to do the best work people
must be organized; and of course an organization is really
a party, whether it be a great organization covering the
whole nation and numbering its millions of adherents, or
an association of citizens in a particular locality, banded
together to win a certain specific victory, as, for instance,
that of municipal reform. Somebody has said that a racing-yacht,
like a good rifle, is a bundle of incompatibilities; that
you must get the utmost possible sail power without sacrificing
some other quality if you really do get the utmost sail
power, that, in short you have got to make more or less
of a compromise on each in order to acquire the dozen things
needful; but, of course, in making this compromise you
must be very careful for the sake of something unimportant
not to sacrifice any of the great principles of successful
naval architecture. Well, it is about so with a man's political
work. He has got to preserve his independence on the one
hand; and on the other, unless he wishes to be a wholly
ineffective crank, he has got to have some sense of party
allegiance and party responsibility, and he has got to
realize that in any given exigency it may be a matter of
duty to sacrifice one quality, or it may be a matter of
duty to sacrifice the other.

If it is difficult to lay down any fixed rules for party
action in the abstract; it would, of course, be wholly
impossible to lay them down for party action in the concrete,
with reference to the organizations of the present day.
I think that we ought to be broad-minded enough to recognize
the fact that a good citizen, striving with fearlessness,
honesty, and common sense to do his best for the nation,
can render service to it in many different ways, and by
connection with many different organizations. It is well
for a man if he is able conscientiously to feel that his
views on the great questions of the day, on such questions
as the tariff, finance, immigration, the regulation of
the liquor traffic, and others like them, are such as to
put him in accord with the bulk of those of his fellow
citizens who compose one of the greatest parties: but it
is perfectly supposable that he may feel so strongly for
or against certain principles held by one party, or certain
principles held by the other, that he is unable to give
his full adherence to either. In such a case I feel that
he has no right to plead this lack of agreement with either
party as an excuse for refraining from active political
work prior to election. It will, of course, bar him from
the primaries of the two leading parties, and preclude
him from doing his share in organizing their management;
but, unless he is very unfortunate, he can surely find
a number of men who are in the same position as himself
and who agree with him on some specific piece of political
work, and they can turn in practically and effectively
long before election to try to do this new piece of work
in a practical manner.

One seemingly very necessary caution to utter is, that
a man who goes into politics should not expect to reform
everything right off, with a jump. I know many excellent
young men who, when awakened to the fact that they have
neglected their political duties, feel an immediate impulse
to form themselves into an organization which shall forthwith
purify politics everywhere, national, State, and city alike;
and I know of a man who having gone round once to a primary,
and having, of course, been unable to accomplish anything
in a place where he knew no one and could not combine with
anyone, returned saying it was quite useless for a good
citizen to try to accomplish anything in such a manner.
To these too hopeful or too easily discouraged people I
always feel like reading Artemus Ward's article upon the
people of his town who came together in a meeting to resolve
that the town should support the Union and the Civil War,
but were unwilling to take any part in putting down the
rebellion unless they could go as brigadier-generals. After
the battle of Bull Run there were a good many hundreds
of thousands of young men in the North who felt it to be
their duty to enter the Northern armies; but no one of
them who possessed much intelligence expected to take high
place at the outset, or anticipated that individual action
would be of decisive importance in any given campaign.
He went in as private or sergeant, lieutenant or captain,
as the case might be, and did his duty in his company,
in his regiment, after a while in his brigade. When Ball's
Bluff and Bull Run succeeded the utter failure of the Peninsular
campaign, when the terrible defeat of Fredericksburg was
followed by the scarcely less disastrous day at Chancellorsville
he did not announce (if he had any pluck or manliness about
him) that he considered it quite useless for any self-respecting
citizen to enter the Army of the Potomac, because he really
was not of much weight in its councils, and did not approve
of its management; he simply gritted his teeth and went
doggedly on with his duty, grieving over, but not disheartened
at the innumerable shortcomings and follies committed by
those who helped to guide the destinies of the army, recognizing
also the bravery, the patience, intelligence, and resolution
with which other men in high places offset the follies
and shortcomings and persevering with equal mind through
triumph and defeat until finally he saw the tide of failure
turn at Gettysburg and the full flood of victory come with
Appomattox.

I do wish that more of our good citizens would go into
politics, and would do it in the same spirit with which
their fathers went into the Federal armies. Begin with
the little thing, and do not expect to accomplish anything
without an effort. Of course, if you go to a primary just
once, never having taken the trouble to know any of the
other people who go there you will find yourself wholly
out of place; but if you keep on attending and try to form
associations with other men whom you meet at the political
gatherings, or whom you can persuade to attend them, you
will very soon find yourself a weight. In the same way,
if a man feels that the politics of his city, for instance,
are very corrupt and wants to reform them, it would be
an excellent idea for him to begin with his district. If
he Joins with other people, who think as he does, to form
a club where abstract political virtue will be discussed
he may do a great deal of good. We need such clubs; but
he must also get to know his own ward or his own district,
put himself in communication with the decent people in
that district, of whom we may rest assured there will be
many, willing and able to do something practical for the
procurance of better government Let him set to work to
procure a better assemblyman or better alderman before
he tries his hand at making a mayor, a governor, or a president.
If he begins at the top he may make a brilliant temporary
success, but the chances are a thousand to one that he
will only be defeated eventually; and in no event will
the good he does stand on the same broad and permanent
foundation as if he had begun at the bottom. Of course,
one or two of his efforts may be failures; but if he has
the right stuff in him he will go ahead and do his duty
irrespective of whether he meets with success or defeat.
It is perfectly right to consider the question of failure
while shaping one's efforts to succeed in the struggle
for the right; but there should be no consideration of
it whatsoever when the question is as to whether one should
or should not make a struggle for the right. When once
a band of one hundred and fifty or two hundred honest,
intelligent men, who mean business and know their business,
is found in any district, whether in one of the regular
organizations or outside, you can guarantee that the local
politicians of that district will begin to treat it with
a combination of fear, hatred, and respect, and that its
influence will be felt; and that while sometimes men will
be elected to office in direct defiance of its wishes,
more often the successful candidates will feel that they
have to pay some regard to its demands for public decency
and honesty.

But in advising you to be practical and to work hard,
I must not for one moment be understood as advising you
to abandon one iota of your self-respect and devotion to
principle. It is a bad sign for the country to see one
class of our citizens sneer at practical politicians, and
another at Sunday-school politics. No man can do both effective
and decent work in public life unless he is a practical
politician on the one hand, and a sturdy believer in Sunday-school
politics on the other. He must always strive manfully for
the best, and yet, like Abraham Lincoln, must often resign
himself to accept the best possible. Of course when a man
verges on to the higher ground of statesmanship, when he
becomes a leader, he must very often consult with others
and defer to their opinion, and must be continually settling
in his mind how far he can go in just deference to the
wishes and prejudices of others while yet adhering to his
own moral standards: but I speak not so much of men of
this stamp as I do of the ordinary citizen, who wants to
do his duty as a member of the commonwealth in its civic
life; and for this man I feel that the one quality which
he ought always to hold most essential is that of disinterestedness.
If he once begins to feel that he wants office himself,
with a willingness to get it at the cost of his convictions,
or to keep it when gotten, at the cost of his convictions,
his usefulness is gone. Let him make up his mind to do
his duty in politics without regard to holding office at
all, and let him know that often the men in this country
who have done the best work for our public life have not
been the men in office. If, on the other hand, he attains
public position, let him not strive to plan out for himself
a career. I do not think that any man should let himself
regard his political career as a means of livelihood, or
as his sole occupation in life; for if he does he immediately
becomes most seriously handicapped. The moment that he
begins to think how such and such an act will affect the
voters in his district, or will affect some great political
leader who will have an influence over his destiny, he
is hampered and his hands are bound. Not only may it be
his duty often to disregard the wishes of politicians,
but it may be his clear duty at times to disregard the
wishes of the people. The voice of the people is not always
the voice of God; and when it happens to be the voice of
the devil, then it is a man's clear duty to defy its behests.
Different political conditions breed different dangers.
The demagogue is as unlovely a creature as the courtier,
though one is fostered under republican and the other under
monarchical institutions. There is every reason why a man
should have an honorable ambition to enter public life,
and an honorable ambition to stay there when he is in;
but he ought to make up his mind that he cares for it only
as long as he can stay in it on his own terms, without
sacrifice of his own principles; and if he does thus make
up his mind he can really accomplish twice as much for
the nation, and can reflect a hundredfold greater honor
upon himself, in a short term of service, than can the
man who grows gray in the public employment at the cost
of sacrificing what he believes to be true and honest.
And moreover, when a public servant has definitely made
up his mind that he will pay no heed to his own future,
but will do what he honestly deems best for the community,
without regard to how his actions may affect his prospects,
not only does he become infinitely more useful as a public
servant, but he has a far better time. He is freed from
the harassing care which is inevitably the portion of him
who is trying to shape his sails to catch every gust of
the wind of political favor.

But let me reiterate, that in being virtuous he must not
become ineffective, and that he must not excuse himself
for shirking his duties by any false plea that he cannot
do his duties and retain his self-respect. This is nonsense,
he can; and when he urges such a plea it is a mark of mere
laziness and self-indulgence. And again, he should beware
how he becomes a critic of the actions of others, rather
than a doer of deeds himself; and in so far as he does
act as a critic (and of course the critic has a great and
necessary function) he must beware of indiscriminate censure
even more than of indiscriminate praise. The screaming
vulgarity of the foolish spread-eagle orator who is continually
yelling defiance at Europe, praising everything American,
good and bad, and resenting the introduction of any reform
because it has previously been tried successfully abroad,
is offensive and contemptible to the last degree; but after
all it is scarcely as harmful as the peevish, fretful,
sneering, and continual faultfinding of the refined, well-educated
man, who is always attacking good and bad alike, who genuinely
distrusts America, and in the true spirit of servile colonialism
considers us inferior to the people across the water. It
may be taken for granted that the man who is always sneering
at our public life and our public men is a thoroughly bad
citizen, and that what little influence he wields in the
community is wielded for evil. The public speaker or the
editorial writer who teaches men of education that their
proper attitude toward American politics should be one
of dislike or indifference is doing all he can to perpetuate
and aggravate the very evils of which he is ostensibly
complaining. Exactly as it is generally the case that when
a man bewails the decadence of our civilization he is himself
physically, mentally, and morally a first-class type of
the decadent, so it is usually the case that when a man
is perpetually sneering at American politicians, whether
worthy or unworthy, he himself is a poor citizen and a
friend of the very forces of evil against which he professes
to contend. Too often these men seem to care less for attacking
bad men, than for ruining the characters of good men with
whom they disagree on some pubic question; and while their
influence against the bad is almost nil, they are sometimes
able to weaken the hands of the good by withdrawing from
them support to which they are entitled, and they thus
count in the sum total of forces that work for evil. They
answer to the political prohibitionist, who, in a close
contest between a temperance man and a liquor seller diverts
enough votes from the former to elect the liquor seller
Occasionally it is necessary to beat a pretty good man,
who is not quite good enough, even at the cost of electing
a bad one- but it should be thoroughly recognized that
this can be necessary only occasionally and indeed, I may
say, only in very exceptional cases, and that as a rule
where it is done the effect is thoroughly unwholesome in
every way, and those taking part in it deserve the severest
censure from all honest men.

Moreover, the very need of denouncing evil makes it all
the more wicked to weaken the effect of such denunciations
by denouncing also the good. It is the duty of all citizens,
irrespective of party, to denounce, and, so far as may
be, to punish crimes against the public on the part of
politicians or officials. But exactly as the public man
who commits a crime against the public is one of the worst
of criminals, so, close on his heels in the race for iniquitous
distinction, comes the man who falsely charges the public
servant with outrageous wrongdoing; whether it is done
with foul-mouthed and foolish directness in the vulgar
and violent party organ, or with sarcasm, innuendo, and
the half-truths that are worse than lies, in some professed
organ of independence. Not only should criticism be honest,
but it should be intelligent, in order to be effective.
I recently read in a religious paper an article railing
at the corruption of our public life, in which it stated
incidentally that the lobby was recognized as all-powerful
in Washington. This is untrue. There was a day when the
lobby was very important at Washington, but its influence
in Congress is now very small indeed; and from a pretty
intimate acquaintance with several Congresses I am entirely
satisfied that there is among the members a very small
proportion indeed who are corruptible, in the sense that
they will let their action be influenced by money or its
equivalent. Congressmen are very often demagogues; they
are very often blind partisans; they are often exceedingly
short-sighted, narrow-minded, and bigoted; but they are
not usually corrupt; and to accuse a narrow-minded demagogue
of corruption when he is perfectly honest, is merely to
set him more firmly in his evil course and to help him
with his constituents, who recognize that the charge is
entirely unjust, and in repelling it lose sight of the
man's real shortcomings. I have known more than one State
legislature, more than one board of aldermen against which
the charge of corruption could perfectly legitimately be
brought, but it cannot be brought against Congress. Moreover
these sweeping charges really do very little good. When
I was in the New York legislature, one of the things that
I used to mind most was the fact that at the close of every
session the papers that affect morality invariably said
that particular legislature was the worst legislature since
the days of Tweed. The statement was not true as a rule;
and, in any event, to lump all the members, good and bad,
in sweeping condemnation simply hurt the good and helped
the bad. Criticism should be fearless, but I again reiterate
that it should be honest and should be discriminating.
When it is sweeping and unintelligent, and directed against
good and bad alike, or against the good and bad qualities
of any man alike, it is very harmful. It tends steadily
to deteriorate the character of our public men; and it
tends to produce a very unwholesome spirit among young
men of education, and especially among the young men in
our colleges.

Against nothing is fearless
and specific criticism more urgently needed than against
the "spoils system," which
is the degradation of American politics. And nothing is
more effective in thwarting the purposes of the spoilsmen
than the civil service reform. To be sure, practical politicians
sneer at it. One of them even went so far as to say that
civil-service reform is asking a man irrelevant questions.
What more irrelevant question could there be than that
of the practical politician who asks the aspirant for his
political favor - "Whom did you vote for in the last
election?" There is certainly nothing more interesting,
from a humorous point of view, than the heads of departments
urging changes to be made in their underlings, "on
the score of increased efficiency" they say; when
as the result of such a change the old incumbent often
spends six months teaching the new incumbent how to do
the work almost as well as he did himself! Occasionally
the civil-service reform has been abused, but not often.
Certainly the reform is needed when you contemplate the
spectacle of a New York City treasurer who acknowledges
his annual fees to be eighty-five thousand dollars, and
who pays a deputy one thousand five hundred dollars to
do his work-when you note the corruptions in the New York
legislature, where one man says he has a horror of the
Constitution because it prevents active benevolence, and
another says that you should never allow the Constitution
to come between friends! All these corruptions and vices
are what every good American citizen must fight against.

Finally, the man who wishes to do his duty as a citizen
in our country must be imbued through and through with
the spirit of Americanism. I am not saying this as a matter
of spread-eagle rhetoric: I am saying it quite soberly
as a piece of matter-of-fact, common-sense advice, derived
from my own experience of others. Of course, the question
of Americanism has several sides. If a man is an educated
man, he must show his Americanism by not getting misled
into following out and trying to apply all the theories
of the political thinkers of other countries, such as Germany
and France, to our own entirely different conditions. He
must not get a fad, for instance, about responsible government;
and above all things he must not, merely because he is
intelligent, or a college professor well read in political
literature, try to discuss our institutions when he has
had no practical knowledge of how they are worked. Again,
if he is a wealthy man, a man of means and standing, he
must really feel, not merely affect to feel, that no social
differences obtain save such as a man can in some way himself
make by his own actions. People sometimes ask me if there
is not a prejudice against a man of wealth and education
in ward politics. I do not think that there is, unless
the man in turn shows that he regards the facts of his
having wealth and education as giving him a claim to superiority
aside from the merit he is able to prove himself to have
in actual service. Of course, if he feels that he ought
to have a little better treatment than a carpenter, a plumber,
or a butcher, who happens to stand beside him, he is going
to be thrown out of the race very quickly, and probably
quite roughly; and if he starts in to patronize and elaborately
condescend to these men he will find that they resent this
attitude even more. Do not let him think about the matter
at all. Let him go into the political contest with no more
thought of such matters than a college boy gives to the
social standing of the members of his own and rival teams
in a hotly contested football match. As soon as he begins
to take an interest in politics (and he will speedily not
only get interested for the sake of politics, but also
take a good healthy interest in playing the game itself
- an interest which is perfectly normal and praise-worthy,
and to which only a prig would object), he will begin to
work up the organization in the way that will be most effective,
and he won't care a rap about who is put to work with him,
save in so far as he is a good fellow and an efficient
worker. There was one time that a number of men who think
as we do here to-night (one of the number being myself)
got hold of one of the assembly districts of New York,
and ran it in really an ideal way, better than any other
assembly district has ever been run before or since by
either party. We did it by hard work and good organization;
by working practically, and yet by being honest and square
in motive and method: especially did we do it by all turning
in as straight-out Americans without any regard to distinctions
of race origin. Among the many men who did a great deal
in organizing our victories was the son of a Presbyterian
clergyman, the nephew of a Hebrew rabbi, and two well-known
Catholic gentlemen. We also had a Columbia College professor
(the stroke-oar of a university crew), a noted retail butcher,
and the editor of a local German paper, various brokers,
bankers, lawyers, bricklayers and a stone-mason who was
particularly useful to us, although on questions of theoretic
rather than applied politics he had a decidedly socialistic
turn of mind.

Again, questions of race origin, like questions of creed,
must not be considered: we wish to do good work, and we
are all Americans, pure and simple. In the New York legislature,
when it fell to my lot to choose a committee - which I
always esteemed my most important duty at Albany - no less
than three out of the four men I chose were of Irish birth
or parentage; and three abler and more fearless and disinterested
men never sat in a legislative body; while among my especial
political and personal friends in that body was a gentleman
from the southern tier of counties, who was, I incidentally
found out, a German by birth, but who was just as straight
United States as if his ancestors had come over here in
the Mayflower or in Henry Hudson's yacht. Of course, none
of these men of Irish or German birth would have been worth
their salt had they continued to act after coming here
as Irishmen or Germans, or as anything but plain straight-out
Americans. We have not any room here for a divided allegiance.
A man has got to be an American and nothing else; and he
has no business to be mixing us up with questions of foreign
politics, British or Irish, German or French, and no business
to try to perpetuate their language and customs in the
land of complete religious toleration and equality. If,
however, he does become honestly and in good faith an American,
then he is entitled to stand precisely as all other Americans
stand, and it is the height of un-Americanism to discriminate
against him in any way because of creed or birthplace.
No spirit can be more thoroughly alien to American institutions,
than the spirit of the Know-Nothings.

In facing the future and in striving, each according to
the measure of his individual capacity, to work out the
salvation of our land, we should be neither timid pessimists
nor foolish optimists. We should recognize the dangers
that exist and that threaten us: we should neither overestimate
them nor shrink from them, but steadily fronting them should
set to work to overcome and beat them down. Grave perils
are yet to be encountered in the stormy course of the Republic
- perils from political corruption, perils from individual
laziness, indolence and timidity, perils springing from
the greed of the unscrupulous rich, and from the anarchic
violence of the thriftless and turbulent poor. There is
every reason why we should recognize them, but there is
no reason why we should fear them or doubt our capacity
to overcome them, if only each will, according to the measure
of his ability, do his full duty, and endeavor so to live
as to deserve the high praise of being called a good American
citizen.